


There You See Him

by JustAPassingGlance



Series: March Mayhem [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For two weeks, Sebastian had walked up and down the shore, looking and listening for any sign of the man who had saved him from his burning ship. The man who had brought him ashore and sat with him, singing to him only to disappear into thin air the minute Sebastian had regained consciousness. {Little Mermaid AU}</p>
            </blockquote>





	There You See Him

**Author's Note:**

> Casually started for Seblaine week almost a year ago and completely and totally overhauled about 10 times between then and now. I think the only similarities that remain are the plot and the characters.

Thick plumes of smoke billowed through the air. The deck was burning from the fallen mast and embers rained down from the remaining sail. Everywhere was a flaming inferno and there was nowhere for Sebastian to escape to.

“GO!” He yelled towards the lifeboats, packed full of men waiting for their prince. The first mate, Nick, was trying to make his way across the deck to Sebastian’s side but there was no clear path. 

No one had noticed the waves picking up as they stumbled drunkenly around the deck. Few things called for celebration like the birthday of their prince and little else had been on their mind beyond the revelry at hand. 

They had been whooping as they followed Sebastian in a jig at the first clap of thunder. The deck had become a frenzied scuffle as everyone tripped over each other in the scramble to their stations. The wind, which had been little more than a cooling breeze only minutes before had pitched them back and forth, making it almost impossible for them to get anywhere. Another clap of thunder had echoed so loudly it was nearly deafening and the first flash of lightening had followed, ripping through the sky and drawn to their ship.

“GO!” Sebastian yelled again. The word was torn from his lips and swallowed by the howling winds, but his gestures away from the boat clearly got the message across.

The men had a hurried debate, but in the end there was nothing they could do.

No sense in all of them dying just to save a single prince who couldn't be saved anyway. His king's new queen was still young enough to give him another child and they all knew it. Nick, who had grown up with Sebastian, was against the idea but as the second mast let out an ominous crack, he was quickly overruled.

Left alone, Sebastian calculated his chances. He and three others had been trapped on the wrong side of the deck when the first mast fell. They had been thrown overboard by a particularly rough wave, but he could see them bobbing in the distance, clinging to barrels that had been tossed over too.

Most of the deck between him and rail was charred or smoldering, but the soles of his boots were thick and he thought he could probably make it. Then he would only have to do was ride out the rest of the storm until he was rescued. 

Only.

He had always been a strong swimmer. From a young age he had been drawn to the water and if it weren't for his princely duties he probably would have still been on the ship, only as a member of the crew. But he would have to some sort of mythical creature that could turn into a fish to have a decent chance at survival. 

Still, an indecent chance was better than the hopeless impossibility that he was faced with if he didn't try. 

He had made it three steps when an explosion ripped through the ship, gunpowder either from their fireworks or the ammunition cache catching alight. 

As though he were somehow no longer one with his body, he saw more than felt himself flying through the air, a rag doll on the wind, limbs waving as chunks of timber flew around his head.

* * *

The sound of a song pulled Sebastian from his unconscious state. The words were barely more than a mumbled hum, like the singer had been at it for hours, giving Sebastian a thread to follow back to consciousness.

Even at the low-pitch, it was easily the most gorgeous voice Sebastian had ever heard.

With great effort, he forced his eyes open. Despite the fact it had been nighttime when the storm had begun, the sun was now high in the sky. Luckily, most of the sun’s rays were blocked by the singing man, who was leaning over him, brows furrowed in concern.

The way the man was angled kept him from seeing his face clearly but the vague thought flitted through Sebastian’s mind that there was something familiar about him. He felt like he could remember those same strong arms that were now supporting his upper body dragging him through the ocean and battling to keep his head above the waves.

A ridiculous idea, Sebastian realized. There had been no other vessel in sight and no way a lone sailor would have been able to survive the storm.

He tried to sit up only to be overcome by a wave of nausea. He didn’t know if it was his movement that startled his companion or the distant yelling that suddenly echoed across the beach.

The man’s eyes widened in alarm. Urgently he pressed something into Sebastian’s hand. It was a shell, about half the size of Sebastian’s palm, a lush purplish color, and smooth for the most part except for a jagged edge.

Sebastian looked up to thank the man for the token, but in the few seconds he had been examining it he had gone.

The shouting grew louder and Sebastian recognized that it was his own name being called, intermingled with the familiar bark of his dog.

“Here,” he called back weakly, not loud enough for human ears but apparently loud enough for Max who let out a howl before charging for his master.

“Hey there, boy,” Sebastian whispered as Max enthusiastically licked his face. Once he had satisfied himself that his owner was okay he let out a series of booming barks, attracting the search party to their spot.

“Where is he?” Sebastian asked as he was helped up by a bedraggled but relieved looking Nick. “Where is he?” He repeated, craning his neck to look out over the sea. The beach they were on was small, surrounded by high rocky walls with only a narrow pathway leading away from it. The sea was the only place the man could have escaped to without encountering Nick.

“Who?”

“The man. The one who rescued me. He left when he heard you coming, but he couldn’t have gotten far.”

“You must have hit your head pretty hard,” Nick said worriedly. “Or swallowed too much seawater.”

The water was clear and calm, sunlight winking innocently off it as though it hadn’t almost drowned them all the night before. And there was no sign of life to disturb the waves.

“There was a man,” he insisted stubbornly as Nick wrapped his arm around him to support his unsteady steps. “He gave me this,” Sebastian showed him the shell, “and he was singing. With the most incredible voice.”

“Sounds like a lovely dream, your highness.”

* * *

For two weeks, Sebastian had walked up and down the shore, looking and listening for any sign of the man who had saved him from his burning ship. The man who had brought him ashore and sat with him, singing to him only to disappear into thin air the minute Sebastian had regained consciousness.

The memory had been preying on his mind. The blur of a face, dark haired and smiling, and a voice almost unearthly in its beauty.

It was almost enough to make him believe in the sailor's tales of sea people. Or in Nick’s suggestion that it really all had been a dream.

With a heavy sigh he sat down on the rocks overlooking the sea. Ever since he had been a kid it was his favorite place to go when he wanted to be alone. To get to the top took a sure foot that none of his nannies ever seemed to possess. And with the waves crashing and the wind whistling around him, he could barely even hear their shouts for him to come down.

He started humming the tune that haunted both his waking moments and his deepest dreams. The words he couldn't remember and the few he could sounded wrong in his voice, so wrong it bordered on an abomination. But when he hummed the melody he could close his eyes, hear the man's voice instead of his own and could almost picture him, bare-cheated and glowing in the sunlight as his lips face hovered inches above Sebastian's.

He sighed again.

There was a moment the day before, a brief, shining, glorious moment when he thought he had found his mystery man. As he had been walking the beach he came across a man with a strip of white canvas wrapped low across his waist and seemingly engaged in a heated staring contest with a very large seagull.

"I don't mean to interrupt," Sebastian had said, tentatively approaching them, unsure what to do but quite sure something should be done.

Both man and bird started, the bird taking off with a squawk while the man had stood frozen to the spot.

The barbed quip on the tip of Sebastian's tongue had died as the man looked up, honeyed eyes and meeting his.

"It's you," he had breathed. "Isn't it? You're _him_."

The man had taken a two quick steps forward, eyes lighting up as he nodded his head, arms and fingers stretching out in the space between them.

"I've been looking. Since that day. What's your name?" The words had tumbled from Sebastian's mouth, tripping over each other as they all scrambled to make it out in one breath. Without a second thought, his own hands were reaching out too.

The man had opened his mouth, name forming on his lips, but no sound had come out.

As Sebastian's arm dropped back to his side, he had known this couldn't be the same man, no matter how familiar he seemed to look. There was no way that the voice that had haunted his dreams had come from a mute man.

It had probably been the echoing remnants of his recent near- death experience that had him bringing the man (Blaine, he had later figured out after an hour of guessing, having noted the way his lips seemed to wrap around the letter ‘B’.) back to the palace and ordering that the finest of their guest quarters be prepared for him.

The waves crashed into the rocks below, pulling his from his reverie. He fingered the seashell in his pocket, the sole physical reminder of his mystery man and how he was so sure it wasn't all a dream. He could still feel the warm fingers pressing the shell into his hand.

A token, although a token of what he wasn't sure.

For the last two weeks his attention had focused solely on the sea during his nightly wanderings. But that night he kept looking away for the cresting waves and back to the palace.

It was a sight he had always taken for granted. In his younger years he had even resented it, as he chafed under the pressures that came with royal life.

Even then his focus wasn't on the palace as a whole, but rather two windows on the upper floor. The candlelight inside flickered invitingly, a call that competed with the siren song in his head.

He had been surprised by how much he enjoyed the day he had spent with his mute guest.

Blaine was different from anyone else Sebastian had ever met. He wore his hair slicked against with sweet-scented poultice and seemed worried about it staying in place, if the way he kept bringing his hand up to it was any indication. The most simple of things seemed unfamiliar to him; instead using his spoon to eat the bisque at dinner, he had spent five minutes using it as a mirror and he had stared in startled fascination as servant had lit the candles in the hallway. He had even reached out to touch the flame until Sebastian snatched his hand away. 

Despite his quirks, and the fact that their conversations were entirely one-sided, Sebastian had felt an inexplicable connection between the two of them. It burned soft and low in his belly every time those brown-eyes looked at him and ignited into sparks whenever they touched.

And when they were together, the mystery melody quieted in Sebastian’s head. And as Sebastian had leaned in for their first kiss, it had vanished entirely.

The kiss, unfortunately, had been ruined by an unwise shift, causing the boat they had been rowing around the lagoon to tip over and left them both spluttering in the water. Sebastian would have gone back in for another kiss, it didn’t matter to him whether that they were dripping wet, but the incident had upset Blaine, leaving his lower lip quivering and his eyes disappointingly cast downward.

Waiting until the next day, Sebastian had reasoned, wouldn’t be the end of the world. Delayed gratification, and all the sweeter for it.

A silhouette appeared in the window, staring out at the ocean.

Vaguely, Sebastian found himself wondering if Blaine could see him. If he was thinking about him too and the fact that, if things had gone slightly differently, they could be spending their night together instead of apart.

The rough edge of the shell cut into his palm, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to make him flinch. He looked back and forth between the shell and the silhouette in the window. The shell represented a fantasy that he inexplicably was indulging himself in. But the man in the window was tangible. A real person he could reach out and touch, a body he could draw close to his own.

Sebastian took one last look at the shell and threw it, as hard as he could, back into the sea.

Fantasies were never something he had much time for, anyways.

Decision made, he hopped down from the rocks and determinedly made his way back up the beach. He had to plan, to come up with something for the next day that would make up for their unplanned swim and his divided attentions. Something that would guarantee that Blaine would be spending the next night in Sebastian’s arms.

He was within throwing distance of the castle when he heard it. That voice. That song. Echoing off the water. Not in his head. But really there, as though his fantasy had been called forth from the ocean by the shell.

He broke into a run, chasing the noise as though a man possessed.

He found the source, sitting in a cove much like the one Sebastian had awoken in a fortnight before. A breathtaking man with sharp features and eyes like sea glass. 

The singing stopped and the man’s face lit up. “Hello, handsome,” he said, coy smirk curling across his face. “Come here often?”

Sebastian’s feet nearly tripped over themselves. “You’re him, aren’t you?” He breathed. He looked different than Sebastian thought he would. How could he have possibly confused eyes like that with a shade of amber? And how had be not noticed muscles like that?

But… that voice. It had been echoing around his head for weeks and he knew that voice, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“My name is Hunter.”

“Sebastian. Prince Sebastian,” he added, standing up a little straighter and puffing out his chest. He swept a low bow and took Hunter’s hand into his own, kissing the back of it. “The pleasure is all mine,” he purred.

Hunter’s grin quirked in amusement, “Hopefully, your pleasure is something we can share later.” He looked deep into Sebastian’s eyes and Sebastian felt entrapped, lost in exploring their cavernous depths.

Everything else grew foggy, the entire world becoming a dull hum in comparison to the shining song that was Hunter.

“Marry me,” his lips said. “I can’t live without you.” There was a tugging in the recesses of his brain, a whispering of a name.

“Tomorrow,” Hunter said.

“Tomorrow,” Sebastian repeated dully. _Blai-, Bl-,_ the whisper said in protest. But the fog quickly overtook it, suffocating it until the vague protests were silenced.

“At sunset.”

“At sunset,” he promised.

* * *

The entire town came to a stop to prepare for the impromptu wedding. Those who weren’t invited on the boat were planning a celebration in the square. Everyone was recruited by their glassy-eyed prince to contribute to the festivities.

The fog persisted to cloak Sebastian’s mind, but he didn’t need it to be cleared. Not when Hunter was right there next to him as they announced the upcoming nuptials. His mind was clear to the only thing that matter; Hunter’s hand on the small of his back and the heated line of their bodies where they pressed together.

In the midst of the morning hustle, he caught sight of a figure lurking on the stairs out of the corner of his eye. The figure seemed to be crumpled in on himself in despair as he watched the announcement. The tugging in the back of his mind resumed, pulling at him towards the other man. _Blaine_ , the name drifted faintly through his mind and started to glow, like an ember.

Hunter twisted in his arms and all thoughts of Blaine were extinguished as their eyes met and he was, once again, drowning in the sea of them.


End file.
